A Blog Posting by Ben Price of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, from June 29th, 2018.
If you’re an American citizen without a home or bank account, a prisoner incarcerated in the American Gulag, or an immigrant with no “documentation,” you have few rights in the United States. Property defines who will and won’t be considered a “person” in the eyes of the law, because in the $ocialist Plutocracy of America membership in $ociety means participation as a wage-dependent “consumer” or as an “entrepreneur” (someone who becomes less and less dependent on family and community by leveraging wealth to increase wealth). You’re either one or the other, or nobody.
Revolutionary Intent
None of this is according to the plans of the American Revolutionaries whose aspirations were enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. According to that document, which justified the overthrow of a hierarchical government, all of us are created equal, with certain unalienable rights that any legitimate government is obligated to secure and protect. That means basic human and civil rights belong to everyone, citizen or not. It means those rights can’t be taken from any of us. We don’t have to purchase them or wait for government to give them the nod. Any government that won’t honor the rights of every natural person equally loses its legitimacy and forfeits its authority to demand our loyalty. At least, that was the original plan.
Rights for Property – Not People
Today property in the form of a corporation is afforded constitutional rights, while people without property are denied the right to participate in civil society. Property is the plastic bottle in which civil rights are packaged and distributed. Some people get a lot more than others. Some get none. Rights in America are as equal as wealth distribution, which is to say, not at all. MORE…